Court jails suspects of child trafficking [Archives:2005/842/Local News]

Hajjah, YT- the Preliminary Court sentenced last week 6 suspects of child trafficking to one year in jail. The 6 suspects were charged with trafficking children from Yemen into the neighboring countries.

The verdict issued by the court also stipulated that the 17 seized children who are aged between 7 and 15 years must be handed over to their families after the concerned parties took commitments from the families to not allow their children to leave their homes.

The phenomenon of child trafficking has been of a great concern over the last few days in Yemen, as it sets the government and civil community organizations interested in child issues in a critical situation.

Rare scores showed that over 30 thousand children were trafficked through the Yemeni borders into neighboring countries in 2003.

Other field studies conducted by the Yemeni Center for Social Studies and Work Research, which is part of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, and under of the supervision of the UNICEF expected the number of children trafficked during 2004 to reach 39 thousand.

The majority of victims were trafficked into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through border areas, most important of which is Haradh.
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